Sugar

Polyvinyl; 2002

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Some college kid told Aloha that they were great to study to and it's been haunting them ever since. How could their whirlwind, vibraphone-driven post-rock get stuck in the background? Shouldn't it at least be distracting? As they finished their second full-length, Sugar, bassist Matthew Gengler wrote on their website: "This year I'm pushing for more 'anthemic pelvic rockers' and fewer 'heartfelt ballads.'"

And sure enough, after an attention-getting percussion intro, Sugar leaps into a song that pins your ears back like an extreme rollercoaster. "They See Rocks" vaults through its chord changes on Gengler's moon-walking bass and the one-man massacre of Cale Parks on drums. It has the lurching, exhilarating feel of Aloha's first albums, but this time the arrangement is bigger: Eric Koltnow's signature vibraphone mixes with electric piano and distorted guitar into molten rock candy.

It's their loudest album, but the band still sound like music geeks: they favor pulsing rhythms to rock beats, and "It Won't Be Long" even echoes Steve Reich. On other tunes, they finally sound as jazzy as they've always threatened to be-- specifically, they're reminiscent of 70s fusion, with its driving rhythms and vague sense of conservatory educations. You can picture the dusty vinyl in their collections by bands like Weather Report and Eberhard Weber's Colours.

They're not the first post-rock band to be serious instrumentalists, but they keep their chops in line by focusing on the songwriting. The mini-epic "Let Your Head Hang Low" and the exotic segues of "Thieves All Around Us" both fit inside five minutes, and the disturbingly titled "Balling Phase" may be their most ecstatic anthem yet. Tony Cavallario is also gaining confidence as a singer: his vocals are clearer and louder in the mix, but he's still earnest and direct, making sure he earns every high note and big chorus.

Where their earlier songs were sometimes fragmentary, the material on Sugar is better developed, as each composition hold its own under independent scrutiny. As before, Aloha edits the songs together into continuous blocks of music, to replicate their live shows. However, this aspect also makes Sugar less fun than their last album, That's Your Fire, where the fast and slow songs hurtled into each other and shorter pieces of tunes ran into sprawling textural epics. To some listeners it sounded cobbled together, but to others, That's Your Fire was one of the more inspired post-rock albums of the past few years.

Sugar needs more of that variety. Aloha throws everything they have-- their biggest arrangements and most belted-out lyrics-- at almost every song on the album. Near the end, "Dissolving" and "I Wish No Chains Upon You" each sound like just more anthemic bricks in the wall: either the band or the listener feels a little tapped. And Sugar could use more of the slow, spare tunes that Aloha was known for: in fact, the one thing this album truly lacks is one of the trademark, vaguely sappy ballads that the band is obviously trying to avoid. They might have been worried about getting typecast, but earlier songs like "Roanoke Born" and "Saint Lorraine" were-- and there's nothing wrong with it-- really fucking pretty. One or two of these per album won't make anyone think they're soft. Besides, I can't study over all this racket!